Ukraine's literary ambitions

The rather political Lviv Book Forum

PUBLISHERS from across Ukraine flocked to Lviv for its annual book fair Forum Vydavtsiv. Founded in 1994, it is Ukraine’s largest event of this kind, combining book market, literary festival, and over 800 events featuring Ukrainian and foreign authors. (Curiously, the guest of honour was DBC Pierre, a writer whose novel “Vernon God Little” won the 2003 Booker Prize, but who has not been translated into Ukrainian until now.)

The four days was a celebration of book culture and, since most of the books were in Ukrainian, of the Ukrainian language itself. Stalls groaned under the weight of luscious picture books, academic manuals, and doorstoppers housing the classics of Ukrainian literature. Publishers could attend a business forum, which included sessions on intellectual property and advertising. “In publishing, as in any other business, international contacts are essential”, the forum’s director and founder, Oleksandra Koval, told our correspondent as if she had discovered something new.

Meeting the forum’s budget of 2.5m hryvnia (just under $308,000) was a challenge. Funds from the local and city authorities covered a mere 11% of the total. The head of Lviv’s regional administration has called on Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president (pictured above), to take next year’s forum under his patronage. The public greeted the news with boos and cries of “shame!". Yuri Andrukhovych, one of Ukraine’s best known writers, quickly announced that he would not attend. The forum is an attractive target for Ukraine’s rulers, whose strategy is “less and less civil society and more and more serfs”, he commented.

Mr Yanukovych is something of a literary sensation himself. According to an income declaration published on the presidential website, he made 16.4 m hryvnia in copyright fees in 2011 from a publisher based in his native Donetsk. Indeed, the president has a few books to his name, including two entitled “A Year in Opposition” and “A Year in Power”. But, as Vasyl Shklyar, a writer, quipped, for the figures to be credible, Mr Yanukovych would have had to “sell two copies of his book to every Ukrainian, including children, old people, and blind people”.

Back in Lviv’s charming city centre, the bustle of the book forum mingled with the mounting campaign for the parliamentary elections on October 28th. Among the candidates are a handful of writers. Purists were upset when a publicity clip for the book forum briefly showed a book whose authors are now running for parliament. They deemed it to be campaign material for which a fee has to be paid . In the end, the frame, which lasted less than one second, was cut.

The book forum and the approaching elections have no bearing on one another, insists Ms Koval. With a dreamy look in her eyes, she adds: “They are two parallel worlds”. In her dreams.

Readers' comments

I expected the author to say rather more about "Ukraine's literary ambitions" and less about Yanukovych and his income manipulations. Why would the author skip over "800 events featuring Ukrainian and foreign authors" ignoring the forum's political as well as commercial value ? And why only a passing mention of the parliamentary elections on October 28th ? Or why has The Economist ignored this week's important bilateral meeting when Poland's President Bronislaw Komorowski underlined his country's continuous efforts to persuade the EU that Ukraine needs to be given a chance to join the European Union ? Surely, there are much more important issues than Yanukovych's silly "copyright fees".

The Economist owes its readers an explanation of how it has managed to miss an important official visit of Poland's President Bronislaw Komorowski to Kyiv on Sept. 20th. Even though Poland's support for Ukraine's Association status in EU was publicly discussed, the key reason for Komorowski's visit was not his formal meetings with Yanukovych (already reported by the English-language Kyiv Post http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/ukrainian-polish-presidents-meet...). The focus of the presidential agenda centered on a formal dedication of a newly erected Monument commemorating Polish military and civilians who are known to have been among the tens of thousands of victims of Moscow's totalitarism burried at the Bykovnia Memorial grounds near Kyiv. (See several photos at http://photo.unian.net/ukr/detail/439222.html)

"President Komorowski at the new cemetery in Katyn Bykovnia: The same as in the Katyn forest, the same crime" - this is how the event has been described by one of Poland's leading papers.http://wyborcza.pl/1,75478,12528296,Prezydent_Komorowski_na_nowym_cmenta...
In the Bykovnia Memorial grounds Ukrainian authorities have managed to reconstruct the names of most victims of Stalinist oppressions. Bykovnia represents people of different nationalities who became victims of Stalin's 1937-1938 'Great Purge' and subsequent political executions. What was until now a case of mostly individual commemorations has been upgraded to a state-built national monument where commemorative services by various nationalities will be held. In contrast to Katyn, which represents a wartime crime, the Bykovnia Memorial grounds demonstrate how the Stalinist regime launched a war of terror against civilians, members of their own society. The estimated 130,000 victims buried in Bykovnia is beyond imagination in terms of the scope of human tragedy. Surely, the event deserves at least some attention by the Economist and other international media.http://photo.unian.net/ukr/detail/439191.html

Heck, an even bigger worry w.r.t. books is that historical textbooks for use in Ukrainian schools under the Donbas mafia-don Yanukovych might be written with the help of Putin's Russian Education Ministry. Which means Ukrainophobes like Ukraine Education Minister Dmytro Srabachnyk can make sure events like the Ukrainian National Republic's independence struggles in 1917-1921 against the invading Russian Red Army and the Russian Imperialist Whites are not taught, as well as the Holodomor not being taught when Stalin starved millions of Ukrainians to death, nor for that matter that the Orange Revolution is taught. Better to have Ukrainian kids learn at the feet of Russian historian propagandists in Yanukovych's world.

Go to big Russian book forums and see how much truth Russian history books hold. Apparently, a fake Lavrenty Beria (KGB butcher) diary is becoming a bestseller in Russia in which the KGB rapist Beria comes out quite great (as reported in the TLS). More great agitprop books on Stalin now on sale on the Russian book market. And those bloody Russian propaganda historical books which could have been written in Soviet times are now supposed to teach Russian children real Russian history, and Ukraine under the anti-Ukrainian bigot Tabachnyk is going to seek their help in formulating Ukrainian history books?

I find it rather strange that TE has so far avoided any reference to a clearly controversial initiative by the ruling majority in Ukraine's Parliament by tentatively approving a bill that would make defamation in the media punishable by up to five years in prison. Under the present laws alleged libel by a journalist can be challenged in a civil court with a journalist facing potential fines. The amended law would restore Soviet-era jail penalties that were abolished in Ukraine a decade ago.

The Paris-based 'Reporters Without Borders' issued a statement this week calling the move "a return to the past", warning that journalists already have to confront increased self-censorship inside news organizations.
The move has also been criticised by Western governments that see attempts to limit media criticism as part of a gradual trend toward greater authoritarianism in Ukraine under Yanukovych. Strangely, The Economist has remained silent.

Obviously, the case of Yanukovich is the case when copyright fees are a convenient way to wrap a bribe. I have never ever seen any of these novels on sale, let alone know anyone who own them.

The best way to make money on those is to sell them to people on the government payroll with a thinly veiled alternative of "or else". The practices of cramming the purchases of the books penned by the bosses on their subordinate is routine in Ukraine, thus I don't think that Mr. Yanukovich, being more of an apparatchik than a public politician, even understands what the book forum is about, regardless of his so-called "copyright fees".

As reported by Interfax-Ukraine, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland has called on the Ukrainian parliament to reject the proposed law making defamation a criminal offense.

"The Ukrainian Rada voted in first reading in favour of a law re-criminalising defamation. Ukraine has a vibrant media sector, but the mere threat of prosecution may create a chilling effect, increase self-censorship and curtail media freedom,” Jagland said in his statement.

He urged the parliament to reject any attempt to stifle media freedom, an essential precondition for a functioning democracy.

trilirium, I see from your comment above that you are interested in getting paid for posting Putinoid Sovok rubbish in the Economist comments section. Well, don't turn to me for help, go to either the PutinJugend Nashi political commissar for financial compensation. Nashi borrowed its slogans for one chapter directly from Goebbels, so you will should find it easy copying and pasting sovok replies on here.

Or go to Stal, named after Stalin. Or go after Molodaya Gvardiya for money - thing is people Putin loves from the Gvardiya like Anna Chapman must be willing to sleep around with old men from the West to earn a ruble, so you might have to do extra work to become Putin's lapdog. Good luck.

ah, trilirium, the comments' sections pro-Putinoid Nashi, Molodaya Gvardiya political commissar.
Beria's diary is fake, but many Russians buy these fake diaries which make Soviet butchers out to be heroes and believe them to be true. This is Putin's new history where Soviet crimes are downplayed and the Kremlin lionized. Putin closes the secret police's archives because he lionizes the Soviet secret police and doesn't wish Russians or others to learn the truth of their crimes.
As for my use of the term "KGB", I wrote it because most Westerners understand this term and so as not to explain having to go through Cheka, OGPU, NKVD, etc. etc. to today's FSB - all superficial name changes but the same organization. All organs of repression.
Hey, trilirium, you probably believe Dzerzhinsky and Andropov to be true heroes don't you? Your hero Putin thinks they were.

Despite The Economist's obvious reluctance to comment on any events of substance relative to Ukraine, the readers should still be interested to know that Parliamentary elections scheduled for October 28 will be monitored by 700 observers from OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). The present plan provides that 600 observers to be short-term (a few days only) and 100 long-term who will oversee also the pre-election campaign. It is expected that overall up to 5,000 monitors will participate in what will be the most ambitious ODIHR mission in the history of the organisation
Meanwhile, Ambassador Kostiantyn Yelisieiev, Ukraine’s envoy to the European Union, pleaded for the EU to sign an Association Agreement to anchor Ukraine to the West assuming that next month’s parliamentary elections are shown to be free and fair.
He stressed that for Ukraine signing the EU Association Agreement will be a historic point of no return.
Present polls show that at least four parties are bound to pass the 5% barrier provided by the election law and be represented in the next parliament: Yanukovych's Party of Regions; the United opposition (representing Tymoshenko’s 'Fatherland' party in coalition with the 'Front for Change' led by Arseniy Yatsenyuk); the UDAR party led by the boxing champion Vitaliy Klychko; and the Communists. At the same time, the polls show that many voters remain undecided at this point in time.

Hmmm... Do you think, they owe me some money? If so, where I can get it? )))

"Beria's diary is fake, but many Russians buy these fake diaries which make Soviet butchers out to be heroes and believe them to be true."

No. Guess, if somebody is buying them -- its because he is interested in history.

"This is Putin's new history where Soviet crimes are downplayed and the Kremlin lionized."

Because on Russian bookmarket now can be found almost any book (from Soviet crimes to Western crimes, anything you want...) -- I see absolutely no sense in your argument.

"Putin closes the secret police's archives because he lionizes the Soviet secret police and doesn't wish Russians or others to learn the truth of their crimes."

Can you NAME the "closed" archives?

"As for my use of the term "KGB", I wrote it because most Westerners understand this term and so as not to explain having to go through Cheka, OGPU, NKVD, etc. etc. to today's FSB - all superficial name changes but the same organization. All organs of repression."